A Vampire
Thirsty and Puzzled
Of all the
morbid beauties in Tim
Burton’s work, “Dark
Shadows,” is his most
pleasurable film in years. As Barnabas Collins, a young member of a wealthy
family turned unwilling vampire, Mr. Depp has a face as white as chalk and
long-fingered hands that skim the air like quick spiders. After 200 years of
entombment, Barnabas awakes in 1972 and drinks in a world populated by
monsters, living and dead, and lovingly adorned with Mr. Burton’s twisted
signature.
It’s
delightful to watch how Johnny Depp actor handles the vampire’s readjustment to
the world of the living, he mostly comes
across like a visitor from another planet, more E. T. than Christopher Lee. Later,
hiding from the sun under dark glasses, a charming hat and an umbrella —
Stoker’s creation moves around in daylight, too,— Barnabas also suggests the
later-life Michael Jackson.
Collin returns to the now-dilapidated Collins family
mansion, where, in the picturesque decay and scattered children’s toys — a nice
suburban touch — he meets his living descendants, including the matriarch,
Elizabeth (a wonderful Michelle Pfeiffer); her brother, Roger (Jonny Lee Miller); her teenage daughter, Carolyn
(Chloë Grace Moretz); and Roger’s son, David (Gully McGrath), whose dark looks recall the
evil child in the 1976 horror film “The
Omen.” Barnabas, of course, fits right in with this freak show, even while
remaining his own (dead) man.
Mr.
Burton’s film resurrects an old television show that was partly inspired by the
1950s and ’60s vampire flicks produced by the British studio Hammer, which were in turn influenced by
decades of fang-ster gore and glory.
“Dark Shadows” isn’t among Mr. Burton’s most
richly realized works, but it’s very enjoyable, visually rich and, despite its melancholic
material and a sporadic tremor of violence, surprisingly effervescent.
It opens in the USA
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